A cacophony of words, a rage of similes, and a dash of awkward poetry. You know, to keep it classy.

Tag Archives: engagement

So, as most of my friends and family know, my man-friend and I recently became engaged. After five years of dating, it’s less of a shock and more of a relief for most people, removing the unknown “when?” from everyone’s minds when they think about us.

Now that I’ve mostly adjusted to wearing a new ring (and rearranging my other rings to accommodate the new sparkly), I’m able to give everyone what they’ve been waiting – and asking impatiently – for since it happened; The Story.

It started with a phone call after work. I was on my way home, and my man-friend called me up to ask me if I wanted to go out to a local bistro that happens to be a particular favorite of ours (and not just because his sister works there and sometimes gets us free stuff).

His reasoning? “I didn’t feel like cooking dinner, and we haven’t been out in a while.” Both logical reasons, because:

Due to our schedules, he gets home before me most days, and therefore he is usually the one to make dinner (and it sucks to have to do that every day, so I don’t blame him for wanting a day off) and

We are trying to save our money to be able to pay off our student loans early, so we rarely go out to dinner.

Of course I agreed, because who doesn’t like to go out to dinner? So when I got home, we put the dog away and immediately left, meaning that we were both in our nice work clothes (perfect timing on his part, if I do say).

We got to the restaurant (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t do it during dinner), and we sat in his sister’s section so we could chat with her for a bit. We had delicious bread, delicious dinner, delicious drinks – honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had anything bad here, so it’s always a good place to go. We laughed and talked and had a general good time (*salutes* General Good Time).

Afterwards, my man-friend suggested that we go for a walk around the lake to help us burn some calories. We had been trying to eat better and exercise more, so this wasn’t out of the ordinary.

We went over to the lake, and it was a little chilly, so no one was there – it was just the two of us walking around.

He started to act a little weird as we were walking, pointing out a dog across the water and ducks up ahead and things like that. He just kept jumping from subject to subject, which was unusual, to say the least. He also had his left hand in his pocket the whole time, which meant that he was pointing with his right hand. That was weird because we usually hold hands when we walk around (shut up, we’re cute), and we couldn’t because of all of the pointing.

I told him that I wish I had grabbed his jacket, because it was getting a little too chilly for me (I was in short sleeves), and he stopped and said he had a surprise for me. He asked me if I wanted it now, and since I had put the nervousness and the pointing and the hand-in-the-pocket together, I knew what was happening and said yes.

He pulled out the ring, and before he had a chance to get down on his knee (or even get the question out), I grabbed him in a big hug and started tearing up. He asked me, and I couldn’t get a response out for a while, because emotions. Finally he said, “I’m so nervous!” So I got out a yes, and he pulled away so I could actually see the ring (I only saw it briefly before the hug and the crying happened).

It’s beautiful.Also, he picked out the ring himself. He told me later that he was going to get a different one, but he saw this one and knew. 🙂

We hugged, we kissed, he was relieved, I forgot about being cold. It was amazing.

After that, we had the enormous task of telling our parents, siblings, grandparents, etc. Some we could tell in person, some got texts or phone calls, but eventually everyone heard about it that night.

Except for my mother.

See, she had chosen that week to go on a cruise, and didn’t have her phone turned on due to being in international waters and ridiculous charges and the like. I sent her pictures of us and the ring, but she did not get them until three days later when her boat came back to the country, which meant that we weren’t able to put anything on Facebook (the keeper of all of the knowledge) until then, because I didn’t want her to find out through social media. That kind of thing is okay for friends and extended family, not really okay for parents.

Finally she got back and found out, and finally we were able to put it up on Facebook, and finally we were able to make the small part of the world that we live in explode in congratulations and happy dances in public. It was no lip synced dancing video, or video with Zach Braff, or photographed event, but it was us, and it was wonderful.